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They couldn't gather to mourn ACA shooting's victims. So Mima's widower did it alone.

Mima's husband of 37 years, Lubomyr Zobniw, spotted the solitary cluster of blooms the morning of the anniversary in the garden his wife used to tend at their Town of Dickinson home. He didn't plant the bulbs, he says.

And were this year like the other years since, his four children would have paused their lives across the country to return home for this day. They would have embraced their father, now 78 and living alone, would have joined him for the rites and rituals that honor their mother, a victim of America's gun violence epidemic.

But today, a different deadly danger sweeps across New York and the broader world; each life taken is a singular, devastating blow to the families and loved ones left behind. Cruelly, the coronavirus leaves no room to seek comfort by mourning the dead — newly fallen or long remembered — in the ways we always have.

It is no different for those who grieve for the victims of the massacre on Front Street. There will be no gathering at the memorial, no religious services at the churches. Zobniw's grief, this year, must be borne alone.

In the morning, his children call and text him in Ukrainian, a tribute to their mother, who taught them her native language. Other family members reach out, friends, too, and his cellphone screen lights up with each new message.

"How are you doing?"

"Where are you?"

"Don't go anywhere."

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Lubomyr Zobniw keeps many mementos of his late wife Maria K. Zobniw, or "Mima" as she was affectionately called, in his Binghamton home. Maria was killed in the April 2009 mass shooting at the American Civic Association.(Photo: Kate Collins / Staff photo)

But Zobniw has three places to be this day.

Three places he's visited on every other April 3 for the past decade.

Mima's husband carefully tugs a handful of the daffodils from the earth and heads downtown.

The memorial

Maria Zobniw, born in Ukraine and a longtime Binghamton resident, one of the 13 victims killed in the 2009 shooting at the American Civic Association in Binghamton.(Photo: Provided photo / file)

The ACA memorial is a sharply hewn granite column at the center of the gently rounded intersection of Clinton and Front streets. In years' past, a crowd has gathered around this column, to give speeches and say prayers in honor of those who died along with Mima.

Zobniw has encouraged passers-by at the memorial to read Mima's story, a lifetime of memories etched in granite. It's an opportunity, he says, not just to recall the circumstances of her death, but to learn from her contributions during her life.

There's a tiny blue and yellow Ukrainian flag at the base of Mima's stone. Beside it, Zobniw lays four of the smallest daffodils.

Lubomyr Zobniw placed daffodils at the stone memorial to his wife, Mima, at the ACA memorial on April 3, 2020.(Photo: Photo provided)

The cemetery

Mima is buried in the Sacred Heart Ukrainian Catholic Church's parish cemetery in Castle Creek. Her headstone is a large stone cross atop a rectangular base, on which her name is engraved. Beneath that is an inscription, written in Ukrainian.

Mima, 60, who spoke at least three languages — Ukrainian, English and French — was offered a job at the American Civic Association as a part-time case consultant a few years before she died. She assisted families arriving in the United States for the first time, helping them with paperwork, lining up jobs and getting acclimated to life in their new home.

April 3 was her day off. But she got a call asking her to come in, said goodbye to her husband, and left the home they shared for the last time.

Eleven years later to the day, Zobniw places six of the daffodils along the polished base of the stone, lined up in a row.

The spot beneath the trees

He's closer to home, now, at a memorial built for Mima under two large oak trees in Prospect Terrace. A stone slab bears an inscription marking July 21, 2010 — the day the memorial was unveiled — as Maria Zobniw Day.

A monument in honor of Maria Zobniw was built in the Town of Dickinson in 2010.(Photo: Photo provided)

"For Maria's family, for the Ukrainian community and for society as a whole," it reads. "Maria's remembrance, deeds and examples are everlasting jewels."

There's no one with him here this year. But there doesn't need to be. Earlier that morning, as Zobniw knelt in the same patch of dirt where his wife once planted and pruned, he heard the robins singing together in the trees.

It was a comfort.

Zobniw places one last daffodil atop the stone, pauses in the early spring light, and turns again toward home.